Horticulture Innovation Lab Demonstration Center at UC Davis

UC Davis students Emily Baker and Robert Duggan transplant African and Asian varieties of vegetables at the Horticulture Innovation Lab Demonstration Center on the UC Davis campus.

In addition to Regional Centers around the world, the Horticulture Innovation Lab now hosts a smaller "Demonstration Center" for visitors to the University of California, Davis, campus. Campus visitors can find the demonstration center on this campus map, located on the edge of Solano Field and Arboretum Drive, near the Environmental Horticulture buildings.

The demonstration center’s mission is to share technologies and practices with colleagues visiting from around California, the country, and the world. This is an active site for students, faculty, and staff to test new horticultural tools and demonstrate best practices for growing fruits and vegetables — particularly those helpful to small-scale farmers in developing countries.

This new demonstration center is also part of the UC Davis GATEways Project, a campuswide initiative developed by the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden to showcase the academic strengths of UC Davis, inspire life-long learning and engage with the local community.

Technologies at the center

The demonstration center includes adaptations and demonstrations of horticultural technologies. These horticultural innovations have been designed to help smallholder farmers overcome field and market challenges at low costs and with simple materials. Here are some of the technologies demonstrated at this center, with links to basic fact sheets:

CoolBot for cold rooms
The CoolBot was designed by an American farmer to trick an air-conditioner into creating a small cold room at reduced costs, to cool produce fresh from the fields. The CoolBot and air conditioner in the demonstration center's cold room are powered by solar panels, for off-grid cooling.

Solar dryers
The demonstration center currently has two UC Davis-designed chimney solar dryers and sometimes a more traditional cabinet dryer model on display too.

Pest-exclusion nets
At times, some of the garden beds at the demonstration center use netting to keep out pests and plant diseases. Variations of net covers and larger nethouses have been used by Horticulture Innovation Lab researchers in African and Asian countries.

Grand opening event

On Oct. 16, 2015, The Horticulture Innovation Lab held the official grand opening of this demonstration center to coincide with World Food Day. More than 100 people attended the event, with speakers including Congressman Ami Bera (CA-7) and Helene Dillard, dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

2016 events

On Oct. 11, the Horticulture Innovation Lab hosted a tour of the demonstration center in honor of World Food Day and as part of the UC Davis Campus Community Book Project. Guides shared information about solar dryers, cool storage, postharvest handling, and fruits and vegetable varieties from Africa and Asia. See the archived calendar event for more information.

More about the Horticulture Innovation Lab at UC Davis

The Horticulture Innovation Lab is led by a team from UC Davis with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. This highly collaborative program is part of Feed the Future, the U.S. government's global hunger and food security initiative.

More about the Horticulture Innovation Lab Regional Centers

The Horticulture Innovation Lab Demonstration Center at UC Davis joins a network of Regional Centers already opened by the Horticulture Innovation Lab in other countries. Find out more about our Regional Centers.

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The Horticulture Innovation Lab is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This website and its contents are the responsibility of the Horticulture Innovation Lab and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.